On The Run
by Shockz
Summary: Nanoha Takamachi needs a place to hide from the law. Harry Dresden has a rather annoying compulsion to prove that chivalry isn't dead. Both of them are having a very bad week. Neither of them has any idea what they're getting into...
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1  


* * *

**

I'm not making a lot of money these days. I get a paycheck as a Warden, but it's only enough to keep me right on the edge of bankruptcy instead of dead in the middle of it. And since Murphy got busted down to Sergeant, Special Investigations doesn't—can't afford to—call me in for help much any more. So when the young woman on the phone asked me if I was indeed Harry Dresden, professional wizard, and if so, if I could help her find a place to hide, I really didn't have any choice but to say yes. Even though it set off every instinctual alarm bell in my head at once, I needed the money badly. Not to mention that when a girl needs help, the annoyingly old-fashioned part of my brain takes over and makes me do many, many stupid things.

Even if the girl in question can level a city block by blinking.

* * *

I don't think of Murphy as looking like "someone's kid sister" any more. She's gotten a little too old for that. Which is good, because it left the description available for use on the young woman who walked into my office ten minutes later. She couldn't have been a day older than Molly, and was probably a year or two younger. Her face immediately bothered me, and it took me a moment to realize why: her reddish-brown hair and baby blue eyes said Irish or Scottish or something European, but every other feature on her face was definitely some kind of East Asian, probably Japanese. She was dressed simply, in a pair of jeans, a pink T-shirt, and a White Sox cap.

I spoke first. "Hello. Miss, uh, Takamachi, right?" I winced as I realized I had probably botched the pronunciation badly. She didn't respond immediately, but pulled out a small necklace with some kind of red orb at the end from underneath her shirt. She mumbled something I couldn't hear clearly, and I almost jumped a little as I felt a wave of magical energy pass through me and the rest of my office. This girl knew magic. She was In On It. That was unexpected.

She looked up at me and smiled warmly (never meeting my eyes, of course). "Hello. Sorry, I just had to make sure nobody was listening in. Yes, I'm Nanoha Takamachi. Call me Nanoha." She offered her hand, and I shook it, suppressing a frown. Maybe she _wasn't_ completely In On It, if she was so willing to give me her Name at the drop of a hat.

"Harry Dresden. What can I help you with, Nanoha? You said...you needed a place to hide, right?" I was about to make a gentle and perhaps ever-so-slightly-smartass remark about how that kind of thing wasn't really my specialty, but she responded quickly.

"Yes. Somewhere heavily protected, magically speaking. A home with a solid threshold would probably be best, but it's also probably too much to ask. A church, perhaps? Or does the White Council have—no, no, probably best not to get them involved."

I blinked. She knew a _lot_. Which meant that the reason she was all right with giving me her Name was that she was utterly unafraid of the consequences. This situation looked more likely to devolve into one of _those_ days with every passing minute. Still, woman in need, chivalry not dead, Harry Dresden idiot. I recovered and maintained a smile.

I knew a couple good places for her to hide, but I needed to know more. "Well, that depends on who you're trying to hide _from_."

"I can't tell you that," she said, her warm, friendly smile never faltering.

Well. There went _that_ line of inquiry. And something was really bothering me about the way she was talking. For one thing, she didn't have the attitude one would expect of a woman on the run—she seemed very calm and friendly, as if she was asking me to help her find a lost cellphone, not protect her from unknown and apparently unnameable pursuers. But there was something else, something I couldn't quite pin down. "Why not? I want to help you, Miss T—uh, Nanoha."

"I can't get you involved. Can't let anyone here know too much. There'd be trouble."

So _that's_ how it feels to be on the receiving end of that line. Now I sympathized with Murphy. And the Alphas. And, well, everyone. "I assure you, I know pretty much all there is to know about the supernatural." A gross exaggeration, but one I felt comfortable making—I was on the White Council and she pretty clearly wasn't, after all.

Nanoha didn't respond except to put a hand over her mouth, clearly trying to suppress a laugh. Most likely, she was completely convinced that she knew something I didn't. Oh, well, might as well humor her. "A church is probably your best bet. If you're staying in Chicago, I'd recommend St. Mary of the Angels in Bucktown. Father Forthill there is, well, informed. And it's not the first time he's given shelter to people on the run from the supernatural."

"A church may not be ideal, actually. It's not so much that I need to prevent...the ones chasing me from entering. I need to prevent them from finding me at all. Do you know any place that might be warded like that?"

My home, I thought, but there was no way I was just letting her crash there. "I can't think of any public place like that, no." Her face fell, so I added: "If you can find an apartment to rent, though, I might be able to help you set up something like that. I don't know how effective it will be in a temporary residence, but it should at least make your trail a little colder." _Though not if you keep giving your Name to every two-bit conjurer you run into_, I didn't add.

She nodded. "Hm...Yes, I think that might work. Especially with...yes, I think staying in Chicago for the foreseeable future would work out the best. And I would certainly appreciate your help with setting things up, Mr. Dresden." I barely noticed her last few words—I had worked out what was wrong with her speech.

Her lips didn't quite match her words, like we were in a badly dubbed kung fu movie. There were only a few reasons that would be the case, and none of them were good. After pausing for a moment, I said, "Miss Takamachi. I'm not sure how to put this, but...are you actually saying what I'm hearing you say?"

She frowned for a moment. "Oh! Right. I have a translation spell active on you. My English isn't very good. Sorry, I probably should have mentioned it to you." She held up a hand as I started to respond. "Technically a violation of the Third Law, I know, but I have bigger problems than the Council right now."

"And _technically_, as a member of the Wardens, I'm obligated to put you under arrest immediately, Miss Takamachi. So I suggest you give me a very good reason not to."

Her smile grew a bit strained. "That's funny. The way I heard it, you're the last person who should be trying to arrest me on a technicality."

I shrugged. "Times change. And you don't seem to be trying too hard to stay on my good side." We stared each other down for a moment. She broke first, her friendly smile finally dropping as she looked away.

When she spoke again, her English was halting and heavily Japanese-accented. (Grammatically almost perfect, though. She was selling her linguistic skills a bit short.) "I apologize, Dresden-sa—Mr. Dresden. I am under a lot of, uh, stress at this time. But I need your help, and I will pay you for it."

"Which still isn't explaining why I shouldn't turn you in to the Council right now."

"I do not think you would be able to, Mr. Dresden." Her smile returned, with a somewhat Mona Lisa-esque quality to it this time. I could hear it in her voice: whether it was true or not, _she_ was convinced she could take me on and win. Then it fell away, just as quickly. "I will..._ehto..._summarize the best I can. I am wanted for a murder I did not commit. There is enough evidence to convict me if I am found, including a motive. I have traveled a very long way to escape the authorities, but they_ will_ track me down if I am not magically hidden. While I have considerable training and experience with magic, most of it is combat-focused—I would not even know where to begin with a hiding spell."

Well, that was a lot more than she had told me before. Still not enough, though, not by a long shot. "Who, exactly, is chasing you?"

"I cannot tell you that."  
Okay, now she was pissing me off. Just a bit. "_Why not?_"

"You would not believe me."

So. Much. Deja vu. "Assume I would."

She hesitated. "I will say that there are...authorities—_human_ authorities—that are aware of the supernatural, and are not affiliated with the White Council or with any government on Earth. They are the ones who are pursuing me. And they are very, very dedicated to their jobs. In fact, I'd be surprised if they haven't tracked me to Chicago by now. So if you do decide you're going to help me, Mr. Dresden, we need to hurry," she said, a note of pleading entering her voice by the end.

I sighed. The sane course of action would have been to say "no" and leave it at that. There was no reason to trust any of her words, and if I did help her, it would probably end up getting me in a lot of trouble later on. But my instincts said to help her, that it would be the Right Thing To Do.

"I'll do it," I said, regretting the words the instant I said them.

"Thank you, Mr. Dresden," she said, giving me what must have been her best heart-melting smile.

"But not for free."

"Of course, of course...What are your fees?"

As we discussed how much cash would be exchanged (and she seemed to have quite a lot), I couldn't shake the feeling that she, at least, believed she was telling me the absolute truth about all this. But that was ridiculous, right? The White Council was the only (major) human representation in the supernatural world, right? And if there were others, I'd know, right?

Right?


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

**

* * *

**

Nanoha called me back the next day, saying she had found someplace to stay and giving me directions. It was a cramped, smelly apartment, and not exactly in the best part of town—but it was now her residence (despite having been paid for under a false name), and that was enough to put some basic hiding wards in place.

_Very_ basic. The best I could show her how to do—especially with a threshold this weak—could maybe defeat a tracking spell using a strand of her hair. Maybe. If the Unnamed Pursuers had anything stronger, it wouldn't do much more than slow them down a bit.

I would have to walk her through the process of setting up the ward—doing the magic myself would have done little or nothing to actually hide her. She listened carefully as I gave her an overview of what it would take, and nodded.

"Hm. It's very different from the way I learned to do magic, but it sounds simple enough." I shook my head. There _wasn't_ any other way to do magic besides the way I did it—but hell's bells, if she was so desperate to convince me that she Knew Stuff, so be it.

"Okay, the first thing we'll need to do is set up a circle—probably with chalk or something." I started digging through my pockets for a piece of chalk I had brought along for _just_ this purpose, but stopped as I saw her also starting to move.

She said "Done," then grasped the jewel on her necklace and mumbled something-

And a rotating ring of rose-colored light, filled with complex-looking glyphs and runes, suddenly traced itself out on the floor.

I blinked. Then blinked again. I looked at the circle. Then back up at Nanoha. Then down at the circle again. "Huh."

That damn smile again. "I told you. I learned to do things a little differently."

I shook my head and mumbled something about freaking Japan always being fifty years ahead of us. "What is that?" I asked a little more loudly.

"A magic circle." The '_what does it look like, dumbass?_' was left unspoken.

"No, I mean, is it lasers, or some kind of crazy hologram thing? And why hasn't it violently exploded by now?"

"I'll tell you later. We need to get this done."

"Right, right. So what you're going to do is..."

I talked her through the process of creating a field that would diffuse her presence across a sphere a couple miles wide, as long as she was within this threshold. It was a relatively complex bit of magic, but she seemed to be an uncannily fast learner. And her statement that she had learned magic _differently_ was either true or a cover she was working very hard to maintain—I had to explain more than one extremely basic idea to her, but she clearly understood quite a bit of the more complicated stuff. And then there was the weird hologram circle. It just didn't add up.

I had a very bad feeling about this.

"Okay," I said as she released her will into the circle and broke it—dissolved it, really. "Now, that _should_ hide you from any weak tracking spells, but you should probably set up a more direct defense as well. Like something that will make the door explode if anyone but you opens it."

"Hm. You're right, that's probably a good idea. So how do I do that?"

I held up a hand, as a very important question came to the front of my mind. "Hang on a second, first. I'm obviously not gonna be able to get you to tell me who, exactly, is chasing you. But I think I deserve to know if I'm going to get in trouble for helping you."

She frowned for a moment, then shook her head. "No. As long as you don't take direct action against them, they aren't allowed to harm you, search your office, or anything like that. Even if they do bring you in for something, you can reasonably claim ignorance about my status as a fugitive. It's not like they've put up wanted posters anywhere you can see them."

"And they'll always do things by the book, huh?"

"Yes," she said with absolute conviction. "Their bosses would know if they broke the rules."

"Really. Exactly what kind of cops are these, anyway-"

I stopped. She wasn't listening; the look on her face said she had heard something. I quieted down and let myself Listen...just in time to hear a voice outside the door say "two...one..."

I didn't have time to do more than shout "Get-!" before the world went white. She was directly behind the door, and took the full force of the blast—whatever it was—while I was only knocked to the ground.

When my eyes finally started seeing something besides painful, infinite whiteness, I saw two black-suited MIB types in the room, moving towards Nanoha. Blatantly obvious MIB types, in fact—black sunglasses and everything. Though they looked a little young—not much older than Nanoha, in fact. And one of them had green hair. What was up with that?

"Nanoha Takamachi," I heard Green say, as he approached the prone Nanoha, holding out what looked like a pair of absurdly high-tech handcuffs. "You are under arrest for the murder of Callia Kinari. Do you wish to be read your rights at this time?"

"Mmmph..." Nanoha was alive, and apparently conscious, but didn't seem to be quite up to the task of forming words yet.

"That sounded like a no. Didn't that sound like a no to you, Mar?" Green asked his partner.

"Let's do this by the book, Nev. Cuff her and wait until she's conscious."

"Whatever. Surprised we got her so easily, actually. Who's the guy?"

"Not sure. ID check comes up negative—whoever he is, he's not in the TSAB files."

What? Tree-sap? What were they talking about? And now Not-Green was coming over to take a closer look at me.

On further reflection, the action I immediately chose to take was probably one of the stupider things I've done. But _chivalry isn't dead_, dammit.

As he came within a couple feet of me, I held up my right fist and triggered all three of the force-storing rings I wore there. Some kind of glowing blue barrier popped up around Not-Green immediately, held for a split second, then shattered, hurling him back against the wall, where he slumped to the floor.

Green turned to look at me. So did Nanoha, her eyes snapping into focus. "No-" she almost said.

Too late. I triggered the matching three rings on my left hand towards Green, which had much the same effect they did against his partner.

Nanoha got to her feet. "Dammit, dammit, _dammit_," she said. "Why did you have to do that?"

"'Dammit'? Not 'thank you'? I think I just saved you. Maybe. I'm not sure. Were there two guys in here about to bring you in, or was it just me?"

"No! It's not that! I mean...thank you, but...I was trying so hard to keep anyone else from getting involved, and you just had to..." She shook her head, then grasped her necklace jewel again. "Raising Heart. Pulse check, ID check." She cocked her head as if listening to something for a moment, then sighed. "Bloodhounds. Figures...At least they're alive. But you just assaulted two officers of the law while aiding a fugitive wanted for murder. They can come after you now."

I didn't—couldn't—process that right now. "Who are they? Cops? Feds? Why does that guy have green hair?"

"What do you mean? Plenty of people have green hair."

"Not here in America, they don't."

"Good point. But to answer your first question...yes, they're feds. Not American feds, but feds. Anyway, we have to get out of here. They'll have backup." Without further ado, she raised her hand towards the back wall of the apartment. Another rose-colored circle formed itself in front of her hand, then disappeared as a beam of light leaped from her hand to the wall-

And blew out a section of it big enough for both of us to fit through.

Empty air stretched out before us, the three stories down to Chicago's ground floor seeming like a hell of a long way. I just sort of gaped at her for a moment. That was a _hell_ of a lot of power, and she had unleashed it with tight control and not so much as an incantation or focus.

Nanoha looked me in the face (still not in the eyes), and asked with utter seriousness: "Can you fly?"

"_What?_"

"Can. You. Fly?"

"Wha—no!"

"Then hold on tight!" There was another flash of rose-colored light from around her feet. Then she grabbed my hand and, yanking me with her, jumped out of the building-


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3

* * *

**

5** days ago:**

_ "Admiral Harlaown...Lindy...It's me. I don't know when you'll get this message, but I can't risk contacting you the usual way. I don't know whether or not you think I did it. I don't know what anyone thinks right now, but this is important: whatever you believe, do_ _NOT_ _try to help me. I think this whole mess is much more complicated than any of us realized. If the investigators come to you, cooperate with them. Tell them about this message, even; it's not like it would change things much. Just don't try to protect me. Because you can't, and I don't want to see you—or anyone else—hurt." *BEEP*_

"That's all I've heard from her."

"I see. Thank you, Admiral. Though I wonder if you're sharing this with us because you believe her, or because you believe she needs to be brought in."

"Because I believe her. I've known her since she was nine years old, Investigator Agera, and I firmly believe—and you can put this on the record—that she is not only unwilling but psychologically _incapable_ of taking an innocent life."

"That may well be. But from her point of view, the victim might not have been entirely innocent, wouldn't you say?"

Lindy had no response to that.

* * *

**Now:**

I was flying.

Stars and stones, I was _flying._

Well, if you want to get technical, it was actually the young woman holding my hand that was doing the flying, in a way that made me feel uncomfortably like the Lois Lane to her Superman. At least, she _looked _like a young woman. I couldn't be sure now. I don't care how differently you learned to do things, twenty-year-old wizards just do not _do _the things I had just seen her do. _I _couldn't project force as neatly and cleanly as she had, at least not without my staff as a focus. She had done it with nothing but her bare hands. And this was after she had instantly performed a spell it had taken me years to get right _on her first try_. Oh, and she could fly.

Human wizards don't generally do a lot of flying. It takes ridiculously tight force control, and the results if you screw it up range from "highly embarrassing" to "spectacularly fatal". The most anyone usually does is a kind of float-hover-thing to look impressive; anything more isn't considered worth the effort.

Of course, that was probably because most wizards didn't have the kind of control necessary to hit transonic speeds, which Nanoha was doing with apparently minimal effort. And she was keeping me in the air as well, holding onto me with only one hand (which physics said should've felt like she was yanking my arm out of its socket, but it only felt like she was gently pulling me along). And I only felt the barest hint of a breeze on my face.

Nanoha Takamachi, I decided at that moment, was officially _really fucking scary._

After our abrupt exit from the dingy apartment, she had taken us up in an uncomfortably vertical climb, then blasted northeast for a few minutes before finally slowing down to a stop over Lake Michigan. She summoned another of those bizarre laser-circles below our feet and landed on it as if it was solid ground. I experimentally tested it with one foot, making sure it was solid before I finally released the death grip I had on her hand.

Floating several hundred feet above Lake Michigan, I sort of half sat down, half fell on my ass on top of what was apparently solid air, and after a couple seconds of catching my breath, I asked the young woman in front of me point-blank: "What the _fuck_ was that?"

She gave me a tired-looking grin. "A lot more magic than my doctor said I should be using right now."

I just shook my head in disbelief, not even bothering to think about the implications of that response. "What _are _you?"

Apparently that question deserved careful consideration, as she frowned thoughtfully for a few moments. Finally, she answered. "I'm human, if that's what you're wondering."

"Yeah, because human wizards break the sound barrier _all_ the time."

"We didn't _break_ it, just sort of edged up against it. You'd know if we broke it."

"Not helping your case."

She sighed in annoyance. "Don't take my word for it, then. Don't you have some kind of way to confirm it?"

I did, now that she mentioned it. The Sight. It was a way for a wizard to see the world as it really was—seeing the true form of everything around him, with the lines of force and energy—magical and otherwise—that bound the whole world together. It would indeed instantly confirm her humanity if I used it. Problem is, using the Sight is a pretty intense experience. It's generally pretty beautiful, but if you Look too hard at something you're not ready for...well, it can be very bad for your mental health.

And once you See something, you can't ever, ever forget it. It'll be with you for the rest of your days. So, if she was encouraging me to use my Sight, that meant one of two things: either she was telling the truth, and was simply a human being...

Or she was some kind of unimaginable eldritch horror banking on me going completely batshit upon getting one good Look at her, which seemed more likely by the moment. So it probably wasn't a good idea to bet my sanity on it.

There was another option, actually: a soulgaze. The reason Nanoha had avoided looking directly into my eyes when we first met was that making eye contact with a wizard was usually something to be avoided. Doing so would allow each person to use the Sight to look directly upon the other's soul (even if only one of them had the Sight normally), and to see, in a sense, who they really were. Not only would it only work if she was human (or near-human—it would work on changelings and White Court vampires, but I seriously doubted she was either), it might give me an idea of whether she was worth trusting.

Assuming you're already prepared to look into the deepest, darkest corners of another person's soul, there's a couple other disadvantages: First, it's a form of the Sight, so whatever you see stays with you forever. Second, wizard or not, the other person gets a look into your soul as well.

I don't know what people see when they look into my soul. I do know that they usually get very pale, and occasionally faint.

I asked her if she knew what a soulgaze was; she swallowed and responded in the positive. I asked if she was willing to go through with one. She nodded, and whispered something to her necklace jewel. Our eyes met.

* * *

The funny thing was, she was still a child at the core.

Well, technically she wasn't far removed from being a child on the outside, either, but it went deeper than that. Inside the depths of Nanoha Takamachi's eyes, I saw a little nine-year-old dressed up like Sailor Moon, striking a pose like she was about to deliver a speech condemning some dark creature's acts of evil. When I looked closer at that child, though, I saw some things I didn't expect. Like how the ridiculous outfit was actually battle-scarred steel armor. Or how the magic wand in her hands was a gun, a sword, a weapon of some kind.

She had made it her job to fight evil, and she mostly knew what that job would require. At the same time, though, she looked...clean. Unmarred by the guilt that would stain the soul of a soldier, or anyone who had taken a life.

Somehow, I got the feeling that though she knew what the job _might_ require, it had yet to actually ask it of her. That though she had seen battle, death was still something largely beyond her experience. And she had never grown up because her nine-year-old worldview, her basic belief in the dichotomy between good and evil (and that most human beings were the former), hadn't yet failed her. God, how I envied her.

There were lines extending out from the core of her soul, too: lines connecting her to any number of others. I couldn't see any faces, but I got the sense of friends, family, students, and...a daughter? Her daughter? Huh. If her armor was cold steel, those lines were solid adamantium: she was bound tightly to those she cared for, and would defend any of them to the death.

A new image passed through, though, centered around the line between her core and the image of the girl that might have been her daughter. Now the little girl in the Sailor Moon outfit was a mother, defending her own little girl with the rage of a bear protecting her cub. But there was...confusion there, radiating out from that moment of defense. Something to do with her daughter had finally forced her to take another look at her black-and-white view of the world, and she was starting to see the cracks in it. Another crack opened up at that very moment, and somehow I knew it was because of what she was seeing in my soul.

I broke the soulgaze. She stared at me for a moment, visibly shaken. Before I could say anything, she whispered to me. "How do you do it? How do you see all that..._do _all of that and keep going?"

"The same way you would," I replied. "Friends." I paused and thought for a second. "Well, beer helps. Friends and beer."

She chuckled. "Friends and beer. I'll keep that in mind. Are you satisfied?"

"Yeah." I didn't know what some of what I had seen meant, but I knew two things for sure: she was human, and she _definitely_ hadn't killed anybody. Ever.

"Good. And I'm sure you have more questions, Mr. Dresden, but we're still out in the open, and I'd be surprised if our friends from the apartment didn't have a couple fliers along with their backup."

I shook myself out of the post-soulgaze daze. "More? More people who can fly?"

"Yep. It's not that rare a skill." I opened my mouth to respond, but she held up a finger. "Run now, questions later. Any ideas where to run to?"

I racked my brain for any solution besides the obvious one. When none came to mind, I sighed and reluctantly said "My apartment. It doesn't have much in the way of hiding wards, but it's probably one of the safest places in the city right now. And I have...resources there."

"Okay. What's the address?" I told her, and she nodded and grasped her necklace jewel again. "Calculate location and flight path...Okay. Grab on." She offered her hand. Once again, I took it and braced myself.

* * *

My home still appeared to be safe, thankfully. Granted, it _had_ only been about twenty minutes since we blasted out of Nanoha's apartment, but I had no idea what methods the Unnameable Pursuers—what had she called them? Bloodhounds?—might have had access to. For all I knew, they could've looked up my face and found my name and address by it already. Or done a locating spell based on floating specks of DNA. Who knows? I'd believe anything right now.

Nanoha took us down in an alley not too far away from the old boardinghouse my apartment was located in, and I let go of a breath I hadn't realized I was holding when we touched ground.

I noticed as we walked the short distance to my front door that Nanoha looked extremely tired—more so with every step. By the time we walked down the concrete stairs to the door and disabled the wards, I was practically carrying her. So, even she couldn't keep up the insane, sanity-defying feats of magic without a little nap time. That was good to know. I forced opened my heavy, permanently-stuck front door and walked her inside.

My apartment isn't exactly luxurious, but all things considered I'd say it's pretty nice. It's got a tiny-but-livable living room with a cozy fireplace, an alcove with far-off dreams of kitchenhood, a bedroom, and a fair-sized subbasement I use as my lab. It also has two permanent residents besides me, both of whom rushed up to greet me as usual. Mister, my somewhat oversize cat, gave Nanoha a brief once-over, then rubbed past both our legs disdainfully. Mouse, my _very_ oversize dog, gave her a similar look, then cocked his head and looked at me questioningly.

"It's okay, boy. She's a client." I paused for a second. "At least, I think she's okay. Nanoha, this is Mouse. He's smarter than he looks. Probably smarter than me." Mouse made a very familiar expression that I strongly suspected was a doggy smirk.

"Mmm. Good doggy." She sleepily reached down and scratched him behind the ears. "Your familiar?"

"No. Just a really smart dog." It was a bit more complicated than that, but I somehow got the feeling she wouldn't appreciate a lecture on the wonders of temple dog genetics at the moment.

A voice came from the stairs down to the lab as we walked into the living room. "Is that you, Harry? Hey, do you know if a potion with radioactive ingredients is going to stay radioactive once you brew it?"

"My apprentice," I said to Nanoha, who nodded vaguely. "Molly, didn't I explicitly forbid you from using the depleted uranium?" I called downstairs.

"Well, yeah, but did you know that there's this radioactive stuff in smoke detectors called americium?" Footsteps accompanied her words. "So I figured it might be useful as a potion ingredient for..." She trailed off as she reached the top of the stairs and spotted Nanoha. "Oh. Hi there." The look she gave me said _'and who the hell is this?_'.

"Hi, Molly," I said. Molly Carpenter was my apprentice, a 19-year-old girl with perpetually changing hair color and a rebellious streak a mile wide. (Though said streak was considerably narrower than it used to be, mostly because she knew the White Council would gladly chop her head off at the first sign of her slipping back into a black magic habit.) She had also expressed..._interest_ in me not so long ago, and since her age was one of the primary reasons I had refused...Yeah, I could see how me bringing Nanoha in would look a little suspicious. "This is Nanoha Takamachi. She's a client. Nanoha, this is Molly Carpenter, my apprentice."

"Mm. Pleeztameechu," Nanoha said with a half-hearted bow, her tone making the words sound more like 'I need sleep, where's a pillow?' than their actual meaning.

Molly did not immediately respond, instead continuing to stare suspiciously. Nanoha, meanwhile, detached herself from my support and sort of stumble-wandered towards the couch.

"She needs a place to hide out, and right now, this is pretty much the safest place in the city for her."

"Really." She somehow managed to keep that word from sounding _entirely _sarcastic.

"Yes, really."

"Hmph." She put on a rather impressive reproduction of her mother's disapproving glare.

"Look, her own apartment's not safe, and she says she was framed, and she gave me an advance-" Before I continued my stream of embarrassed justifications, and indeed before I had time to wonder why I was putting up with my _apprentice _giving me the third degree, we were rather rudely interrupted by the sound of a hive of angry hornets being torn asunder with a chainsaw, all to the chorus of a thousand vuvuzelas. I looked over Molly's shoulder to see that Nanoha had passed out on the couch.

Wow, that girl could snore.

"Wow, that girl can snore," Molly said, a hint of a smile cracking through her glare. "So what's her story?"

"I'll be sure to let you know when she tells me some of it," I said. "She's apparently wanted for murder. She came to me-"

"For help clearing her name?"

"No," I said. It finally struck me how odd it was that she had said absolutely nothing to that effect. "All she wanted me to do was help her hide out." I told her about everything that had happened so far, including Nanoha's impossible feats of magic. I left out what exactly I had seen in the soulgaze, of course—that isn't the type of thing you go around telling everybody.

"Um, Boss," she said when I had finished, "you sure you're not hitting the booze a little hard?"

"I know how insane it all sounds. And I don't understand it much better than you do. All I know right now is that this girl needs help, and she's paying me to provide it."

Molly just shook her head, then frowned. "What she said about the pursuers...they're feds...but they're not from any government on Earth. What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"What it means," I responded, trying to make it sound as if I had already thought about that, "is that she's lying about something, even though she _does_ really need my help. Which wouldn't surprise me much." I didn't even stop to consider the alternative—that she was telling the truth, and that there _were_ no inconsistencies in her story. That would just be ridiculous.

But it would explain quite a bit...

"So what are you going to do? Just let her crash here until something happens?"

"No, I'm going to let her get some rest. And when she wakes up, I'm going to see about getting some answers."


End file.
